


Merci

by aspenrunes



Series: in dreams [1]
Category: ROTTMNT - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21871525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspenrunes/pseuds/aspenrunes
Summary: A Donnie-centric fic about the aftermath of the battle against the shredder in the season 1 finale of rottmnt.  About how the impossible battle affected them, but mostly about the emotional impact of Don's battle shell getting destroyed.
Series: in dreams [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623040
Comments: 13
Kudos: 168





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a one shot, but I decided to split it into thirds. The first two parts are basically background/context and the third part is the actual scene.
> 
> about narrative voice: there is no specific narrator, however, I like to write narrative voices as biased by whomever the main character of a given point/scene is. Since Donnie is the main focus of the majority of this fic, the vast majority of the narrative voice will be biased by his thoughts and worldview
> 
> about writing the characters and details: I have not seen all episodes of rottmnt (and have no money to do so on my own), so if there are a few details that are incorrect or certain things that aren’t perfectly in character, that could be a big reason why (or maybe I just felt like writing it like that)

To say they were exhausted would be an understatement. After battling against The Foot Clan on the train, Baron Draxum right after, and then the beast they had summoned, ‘The Shredder’, for days without true rest… everyone was bruised, sore, and beyond worn out. Sleep was coming after them like a starved wolf after a rabbit, and its arrival was inevitable.

And so they slept. Restlessly and yet more deeply than they had ever experienced. Refighting their battles in dreams, tossing and turning onto and off of their injuries, and unable to stir back into consciousness in these initial hours. They needed the rest, but having been non-stop fighting their all for so long, it only came naturally to fight this too.

Still, sleep devoured them.

It was a few days before they started feeling rested enough to begin staying awake and hanging out throughout the lair again: First Leonardo, then Michelangelo, Raphael immediately after. Donatello.

Having been too exhausted to climb into his bed properly, he had fallen onto his bed on his stomach and slept like that when they had returned: reliving his own encounters in his dreams. Occasionally throughout the slumber his dreams would wake him in a haze of fear, and suddenly he was in the dark of his room again. This time he could escape, and here he was calmed by the dark, the subtle beeping and blinking of his few remaining pieces of tech - the items that couldn’t move on their own, and the awareness that he was alone.  
Which was also part of what scared him, and part of what being awake now, here, disturbed him. That his brothers hadn’t been able to help him when he failed to escape, and how just about all of his inventions had been destroyed. Things had gone… so terribly, to say the least.

And now his shell ached remembering how The Shredder had torn through his battle shell like it was nothing. Although he had taken it off before collapsing onto the bed, half-asleep, it still felt like he was wearing it, and it still felt like it was being torn apart.  
 _He was **sore**_. With the ache in his shell and the blows he had taken, he wouldn’t be surprised if he had bruises underneath. There was no doubt he had bruises everywhere else.  
Dread wouldn’t leave his throat, thinking about it all, but still he managed to sleep enough.

A few days into resting, recovering, Donatello was the last one to rejoin his brothers as they started hanging out in other rooms again, having gotten over their initial exhaustion. At first they still didn’t do anything too strenuous as everyone was still sore to some extent and covered in bruises and cuts, but that couldn’t stop them from rewatching old movies or playing video games.

No one spoke too much of what had happened with The Shredder. Not yet. He was gone, the city was safe, and with everyone still recovering they all wanted to take it easy for the time being. Everyone had made it out, everyone was safe, and that is what mattered most.

That’s not to say it had no effect on their emotional states. They were a family. Each and every one of them inherently had so much to lose in each other and in everything they had ever known, and they were aware of that. The fact that they had succeeded was lifetimes of relief.  
What had happened was bigger than anything else they’d ever faced, and because of that they found a new appreciation in the little things in their daily lives, and they found solace in hanging out with each other. They were alive, they were recovering, and time kept going.

As usual, Donnie wore his hoodie when he started moving around the liar again. It was comfortable and he didn’t like the feeling of having nothing over his shell. He’d grown to be like this for years, but after the close call he especially couldn’t stand the feeling of his bare shell.  
And no one mentioned it. Not how close of a call it had been nor his weakness. Leo seemed to have an absolute faith in them and Don couldn’t understand that, not when he knew that they had limits. That he had limits. And when he moved it still felt like The Shredder was trying to tear through him, even when he’d think about other things his body remembered. He tried not to think about it.

Rebuilding his tech would wait. He was afraid to face the damage. He wouldn’t admit that, but spending time with his brothers first seemed more important anyways. And just relaxing. His injuries needed to recover just as much as theirs did, he didn’t need to get back to work just yet. He didn’t want to think about it. However, it could only wait for so long.

Eventually he would be on the couch, watching Leo getting ready to (once again) play through a game they’d already defeated a thousand times collectively, when his focus started to drift towards his lab. He had known that he would have to start working to rebuild his tech since day one, and the anticipation had been growing within him with every day, every passing hour, and now was the time. Excusing himself, Donnie got up and went to his lab.

The first thing he did was get out the blueprints for his inventions that had been destroyed and laid them out on a desk, ignoring the tattered battle shell on the ground. He would have to go through the blueprints to decide what order to prioritize them in- the only good thing he could think about this is that he’d have the chance to make newer models and improve everything. It still sucked that it was all destroyed, but the new pieces would be better.

With the blueprints on the desk, he hesitated. Without having to look over or review any of the sheets, he already knew that building a new battle shell would be on the top of his priority list. It would have to be, wouldn’t it? If there was the chance that they were facing opponents like this…  
A chill went through him.  
The Shredder’s strength was certainly an outlier; hopefully they wouldn’t be facing anyone like that again.

Moving past his reservations, Donnie went back to his battle shell, picked it up, and set it on his work bench to start combing through the damage. Start looking for weak points, where it failed, and piece together improvements he could make for the next model.  
The top padding had been torn through, that was no surprise. The electronics underneath - the jetpack, his extra arms, everything - had been ripped out, fragments of the wiring stuck out at the edges. Carefully, he worked to pull out shards and fragments, steadily cleaning the mess to get a better look inside and at what was going on exactly, doing his best to keep down the anxiety that was climbing inside of him. He was busy, and the fear wouldn’t help his work, but still. It was hard to not be affected going through this; he’d never had a battle shell torn apart like this before. And so easily…

He couldn’t help but frown as he reached the last layer in the battle shell, another armor layer. Reinforced, stronger than all the other layers. And it had scores in it too. All his valuable creations that he spent so long on - months, years - destroyed in the blink of an eye. Like they were nothing. But he had created them for a reason- these were important to him, more so than he could explain, and when it came to face this opponent they had all been worthless.

That seemed a bit harsh; they’d served their purpose, right? He was alive and, if even for a second, he had distracted The Shredder. It wasn’t nothing, … _right?_

Don reached out to pick up his battle shell again, but hesitated as his vision blurred. Confused, wiped his eyes to discover that those were tears. His body was trying to cry. That was inconvenient, wasn’t it? And unnecessary. He was fine now, and more importantly: he was trying to work.  
He took a moment, a deep breath, to recollect himself and then picked up the battle shell. Even though a few bits of it still seemed to be intact, he couldn’t use any of the parts from it in building the new one. Although supplies could be difficult to find, he couldn’t risk any micro-tears or fractures or any weak points that might not be so easily viewable to be transferred into the new model. Not with something this important. It would be useful as a reference in making the new one, though, so he went to move it onto a stand where he could view it better as he’d start work on the next one. At the very least he would be able to-

He stopped cold as his hands felt something, unevenness, on the underside of his battle shell. He had missed something, but there shouldn’t…

Looking back at the armor, Don started to stretch it out, held it up for a better view. In the worst of the wreckage, light shined through from the other side. It had holes in it. The Shredder had actually managed to tear through, he-

Don lowered the armor again, his heart dropping with it and his arms growing weak as the fear came back. Set it back down on the ground. He could still feel the force of The Shredder ripping apart, slashing through, his gear. He could still feel…

Fear was cold, wasn’t it? Terror: electrifyingly so, but this feeling in his blood right now was ice and his bones felt hollow. He turned to look in the mirror. An incredibly tired, and still fairly banged up, him looked back.  
He never liked feeling like this, but his brothers could take harder hits than him and that much had become apparent at a young age. That he’d never be able to stand up in battle for as long as they could, could he? He pulled off his hoodie.  
They were all different types of turtles. He wasn’t made for taking the big hits, but he was smart, and he could always pull through and do what needed to get done, right? With his tech… but it had all been destroyed so easily, and there were holes in his battle shell. He could still feel…  
Slowly he turned around look at his shell in the mirror, and now he saw the scratches. Not deep, but The Shredder had reached him through his armor, and one more hit would have…

It had been a closer call than he’d previously thought.

A dark speck in one of the scratches caught his eye, and he reached back to try and inspect it. Something hard, sharp. Unstuck it from his shell and brought it in front of him for a better look. A fragment of his armor, one tip of it red. Frowning more now, he looked back in the mirror again to see a single drop of blood welling up in the scratch where the piece had been prodding him. This was his mortality, and sure they could all bleed and they had all been hurt, but he couldn’t take the hits they could. Everyone knew that. He’d made the battle shell specifically so that he’d be on the same level as the others, but he wasn’t.

He’d almost died. If not for his tech, he would have. And Leo had fooled Big Mama and taken down a champion in the battle nexus while outnumbered, seemingly effortlessly, and Mikey had thrown a ship, and Raph was the hardest hitter of them all. And what was he, if his tech couldn’t help them?

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to think about it. Silently, he put back on his hoodie and went back to work.


	2. Chapter 2

Sleep became nearly nonexistent for Donatello after what he had discovered in the lab. Instead of sleeping, he worked relentlessly on his tech. After another couple of days his brothers started going out again. He stayed in his lab, occupied. Planning, revising, starting to rebuild his inventions before stopping and moving onto another before he could finish the first- adamant that their designs weren’t perfectly ready to be made yet. Simultaneously feeling like he needed these inventions and that they were ultimately useless, he couldn’t stop yet, couldn’t leave.

It was unclear whose idea it was exactly, but as they recovered and the soreness faded, it was determined that they would throw a victory party on the day that marked a week since their defeat of The Shredder.

All having noticed how Donnie had holed himself up in his lab, all getting the vibe that something was up (since, while Don had a tendency to get ‘in the zone’ while working on his inventions, they couldn’t recall a time where he had stayed at it for this long without break- at least, not since the incident which lead to his inventing the battle shell), they unspokenly knew that he wasn’t going to come to the party. Not without some talking to.

While they had all been expressive of their emotions as kids, Donnie in particular, who had been so fragile and the easiest to hurt on account of his soft shell, at one point stopped directly expressing himself- or at least expressing when something had hurt or upset him. If something was small he might make melodramatic jokes about it, but that wasn’t honest communication, and if something was big he was known to shut down and not mention it at all.  
And he hadn’t been talking, nonetheless even hanging out with them anymore since the second he went into his lab. It wasn’t a secret that Donnie was still upset by their facing The Shredder.

Raph, being the oldest, went to try and coax Donnie into coming to the party first, and quickly failed. Donnie refused to speak about how he was feeling, instead saying that he has a lot of work he’d rather focus on, and Raph didn’t want to push him, afraid of making it worse or accidentally crossing a boundary. Instead, Raphael decided that ‘he just needs more time’ and left it at that.

That didn’t sit well with Mikey, who decided to take his own crack at it. Skipping the formalities, Mikey jumped right into telling Donnie that it’s alright to be shaken up by what happened- that they had all been scared while fighting The Shredder and that was understandable. That they had all been hurt and scared during the fight, so of course they all understood that, and that everything was okay now and Donnie was going to join this party because _everything was **okay**_ **.**  
During this passionate… _lecture?_ Don had paused his work to listen, thought for a moment, and then ultimately informed Michelangelo that he was staying put to continue working and they were free to ‘party on’ without him, and tried to reassure him that he was just busy. After being shown the amount of blueprints for the devices he was working on recreating, Mikey slumped away in defeat.

Later, seeing the first two down after their failing to get through to Donnie, Leo knew that is was his turn. He told Raph and Mikey to start the party and he would be back with Donnie before April could get back with the pizza. Whatever was up with Donnie, he was sure he could get through to him.

And so, Leo went to Donnie’s lab.


	3. Chapter 3

Music from the other room spilled through the door, into the lab, as Leo stepped in and looked around. It always mystified him how so much junk he couldn’t name could be in one place, and how Donnie had a use for it all.

Don didn’t turn to look at him as he stepped in, focused intently on the circuitry of… _something_.  
“Shut the door,” he said, not pausing from his work. Leo did as he was told, and suddenly the music was much quieter. Not quite gone, but muffled heavily.  
“I presume you’re here to try and get me to join the party as well,” Donatello commented.

Don didn’t seem to be taking any focus off of his work, so Leon continued to look around, walking slowly through the lab. “It’s not like I have any other reason to be here,” he replied. Leo paused as he looked over the unfinished recreations of inventions that lined the shelves. It wasn’t unusual for Donnie to have some pieces he needed to finish, but the sheer amount of incomplete works left a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. Out of a laboratory filled with stuff, he couldn’t see one thing that looked complete, and something about that seemed off.

“You know… Mikey and Raph are worried,” Leo continued.

“Raph’s always worried about everyone. That’s sort of his thing.”

He looked over at Don. “And Mikey?”

“I heard his lecture. I think he might have been self projecting, honestly. You should talk to him.”

Leo frowned, and Donnie stayed heavily at work. He crossed his arms and leaned back against a table.  
“It’s not just them. We’re all worried. Just because you won’t talk about it doesn’t mean we can’t tell something’s up.”

A slight pause in Donnie’s work. Another moment later and Donnie’s monotone voice droned, “So what, you’re psychic now?”

The pause was enough to make Leon certain that he was on the right trail. Uncrossing his arms, he stepped closer.  
“Well, Raph and I did figure out how to ninja mind meld back on the train, so… pretty much,” he grinned. Donnie, however, did not respond to his joke.

Leon frowned again. “Come on,” he groaned, growing frustrated at the brick wall Donnie was determined to be. “The whole Shredder thing has passed, everyone is okay, what’s bugging you so much that you refuse to hang out?! And don’t say you’re just busy with your tech, because by the looks of it you haven’t finished anything- and with as many of these things you’ve started you’ve defs had time to finish at least one of them, so what are you really doing down here?” Leon looked at him harder as he thought. “…Are you _hiding_ from something?”

Donnie’s silence seemed more intense with every question, somehow almost loud in itself. The more Leon prodded, the more Donnie leaned into his work, the more Don focused on ignoring him. But yet he hadn’t asked him to leave, although Leon couldn’t help but feel he was probably close to that line.

Leo sighed. Quiet as ever, Donnie clearly wasn’t going to answer any of those questions. Curiosity poked him though, and he peered over Don’s shoulder.  
“What are you working on anyways?” He looked at the pieces in front of Donnie, too incomplete for him to make out what it was going to be a part of, but blueprints further up on the desk had what looked to be one of his battle shell designs. He noticed Donnie slow his work as Leo looked over his shoulder, he’d always been uncomfortable with others watching him work- especially in the earlier stages of a piece. Leon stepped back to give him space.

It was strange though that he seemed to be building a new shell when it’d be better to repair the old one first, right? Donnie had had multiple battle shells before, so him building more than one made sense, but Leo hadn’t noticed his old battle shell - which would definitely be on display if it were complete - and, again, all this not finishing anything was weird. For Donnie, at least.

Leon gazed around the lab, looking for the old shell, before spotting it in a corner. Without a word, he walked over and picked it up. Don faltered in his work, and then stopped, as Leo gave it a look over. It looked like Donnie had picked out the loose pieces and cleaned it up a little at some point, and now, without so much mess, he could see that the destruction was more than it had looked at first, on that night. Shredder had practically torn out everything that had been in it.

Leon paused to look over at Don, and noticed that he’d stopped working. Now, instead, just sat staring down at his unfinished work. Not moving. Of all his inventions, his battle shell was especially important, if not the most important, to him. This must have hit him hard.

“Looks like Shreddy really did a number on your battle shell,” Leon commented quietly. Donnie didn’t respond. Leo exhaled. “Look, I know this must be hard on you, I get it- I get that _this_ is important to you.” He held the torn armor up with one hand, as if to show Donnie who still wasn’t looking. “And seeing it broken like this must be hard, but this is what it’s for, isn’t it? To take the big hits so you don’t have to, and it did, and everything’s okay now.”

No response.

Leo’s arm holding the battle shell lowered. “…I know I put a lot on you guys when I asked you to keep fighting Shredder while dad and I got help, but I wouldn’t have left you guys there if I didn’t know for certain that you could handle it. We all did what we had to do, and we won. The Shredder is gone, and everyone is still here and… alive, and it’s okay.”

Silence.

Slowly, Leon put the torn shell back, not inspecting it further. “Raph said you might need more time, and that’s okay too, I guess. I get that we all handle things differently and move at our own speeds and stuff, but…” he turned to look at Donnie one last time. “We could really use our brother out there. I know that your tech is important to you, but you’re important to _us_. I know we can kind of shit on each other sometimes, but you know it’s just jokes. We really do care.”

Leo paused one last time for a reaction that didn’t come, and then, heart sinking, admitted his defeat.  
“You’re free to join the party if you decide you want to,” he murmured. “We’ll save some pizza for you either way.” With that, he slowly started making his way back towards the door. He reached for the handle, about to open it, when the sound of Donnie’s voice stopped him.

“Leo,” Don murmured, his voice swimming in exhaustion, “wait.”

Leo listened. Took his hand off of the handle and turned to look as his brother fixed his goggles - taking them off of his eyes and back on his forehead - and then, hesitantly, took off his hoodie. Dread hit Leon like a train, and with the feeling in his chest he was certain he’d swallowed his heart as his brother got up and turned around to reveal the marks on his shell.

The scratches didn’t look too deep, and thank god he didn’t see any blood, but still…  
Slowly, he started his way toward Donnie again, in a shocked daze. A curious hand stretched out toward the scratches before he thought to stop himself and pulled it back to his chest.

“Does it hurt?” he whispered.

Donnie still didn’t look at him. “Yes.”

Leo’s head was spinning as he processed this new information: how The Shredder didn’t just break the old battle shell, but somehow managed to tear all the way through it, how- how close Don must have been to-

“…I’m so sorry.”

“You know…” Don murmured, voice still achingly tired, and still avoiding eye contact, “I threw everything I had at The Shredder. Every single piece of tech I’ve made, and it didn’t even slow him down for a second. Everything gone in an instant, and none of it even laid a scratch on him. And I… I saw that, and I tried to get away- because if every invention I’ve ever made coming at him at once does nothing, then what chance do I have?”

Leon frowned as he listened. Donnie pulled his arms up to his chest, starting to shake. Leo put a hand on his shoulder as Don continued talking, his voice wavering.  
“So… I tried to get away, but he grabbed me, and I- I couldn’t get away. I could feel him tearing through my battle shell and I couldn’t-” his voice caught in his throat, but he pushed through and kept going. “The only reason I was able to get away is because his vision was obstructed for a moment. By a _handkerchief_. If it had deviated even an inch in any direction, or if a slight breeze had blown in that moment…” his voice trailed off as he looked intentionally away, a hand on his face, his breathing shaky. He was trying not to cry.

Careful to stay off of Don’s shell, Leo hugged him. After a moment, a few breaths to calm down, Donnie hugged him back.

“I’m sorry,” Leo apologized again, his voice a whisper. “I just really believed that you guys could do it-“

“You weren’t wrong.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t right either. I never really considered that anything bad could happen.” Leo stepped back, ending the hug. “I mean- you’re all amazing, and we’ve taken down so many bad guys and creeps before. It never crossed my mind that you… could lose- that there was a chance of you guys losing. But also we, and I, didn’t really know the full strength of The Shredder, and I didn’t…”

Donnie looked at him.  
“You had to leave. If you and dad hadn’t gone to Big Mama for help, then The Shredder would still be out here and everything would be worse. What happened, or what could have happened, isn’t your fault, it’s just… ever since that fight I-” he paused, words on the tip of his tongue but refusing to come out. After so long, it felt wrong to just outright say how he felt, to admit to this feeling in his bones that he couldn’t shake and how much it had been affecting him. And he thought he’d been doing well speaking just a moment ago, hadn’t he?

He looked at Leo as if searching for an answer to this, exasperated with himself and his own inability to just say these words, as if maybe Leo could just pass on his skill of always being able to speak and knowing what to say and they could get this over with. But that wasn’t going to happen. Don looked over at all the unfinished works he had on his shelves, scattered throughout his lab, realizing just how many there were. He rerouted his thoughts.

“I can’t sleep!” he admitted, nearly exploding from his own frustration. “Not without being there again. And I can’t stop thinking about it. It still feels like he’s there, digging into my shell. Leo, I’m- I’m-” he could feel that feeling again, of his body trying to prevent him from continuing speaking, but this time he pushed through, “ _I’m afraid!_ Ever since that fight I’ve been terrified, and I don’t know how to shake it.  
“And not just of The Shredder! Although if he were to somehow make it back out I would probably die of a heart attack just from getting the news, but that’s not it! No- what it is is that there’s no way that The Shredder is the only powerful being out there, so what about the next time this happens- that we’re in over our heads?!”

His heart sank with every word Donnie spoke; Leo didn’t want to face the thought of that.  
“Hopefully it won’t happen again, but if it does then we’ll figure it out then, and we’ll be facing it together.”

“Until you have to go running off for help, Raph’s knocked out by a big hit, and Mikey and April are too far away to help in time, and I’m screaming my voice out because I’m trapped and about to have my shell - _my real shell_ \- ripped off of me-” he lurched forward to grab Leo by the shoulders. “My life was at the mercy of where a tissue landed, and when it mattered the most I was alone…” his gaze drifted as his vision blurred, tears trying to rise to the surface, his own reflexively trying to hide that.  
The next words didn’t seem entirely his own, coming out by themself.  
“…I almost died,” and here Don stopped. He’d thought about it, yes, but saying that out loud was so much different than coming across it in wandering thoughts. With it having been spoken, he couldn’t shove that back to the depths of his mind and pretend it didn’t exist. That it hadn’t happened. No, now it was spoken. Now it was real.  
And, wiping the side of his face and noticing that his hand was wet, he realized he was crying. No snivels or hiccuped breaths or anything else, just tears. This seemed to be the only way he could still cry, after trying to repress so much for years.

Leo placed a hand on Donnie’s shoulder in return, silently reeling emotionally. He had a lump in his throat like he was supposed to cry, but no tears came, and, conversely, noticed Donnie crying only tears. Funny how neither of them could really cry, huh? Disaster twins.

He cleared his throat to try and make the lump go away and then took in a shaky breath to speak, but it was shaky, and the lump was still there. Don noticed the shaky breath, the lack of words, and looked back up at him. He knew. They stood there for a moment in silence, looking at each other, in something of shared solidarity and understanding. A moment of peace.

And slowly the lump started to fade and the tears slowed.

“Don,” Leo exhaled, starting slowly. “Honestly, I… don’t really know what to say. I think we’ve all been kind of… avoiding talking about what happened because it’s a lot, and it’s so much easier to just say that everything’s fine now that it’s done than to actually think about it, but… I don’t know. You’re not alone in this though, and if something bad like that ever happens again, we’ll be better prepared. We’ll be ready. Okay?”

Donnie’s gaze drifted to his partially built, new, battle shell, and after a moment nodded in agreement.

Relief washed over Leon.  
“Good... Now, about your shell- do you need any kind of medicine or something to help those scratches? Because we wouldn’t mind getting you some.”

Donnie shook his head. “I have everything I need…” he said as he went to pick up his hoodie, and then added a “Thank you.”

“Okay.” Leon eyed the scratches as Don walked away, still uncomfortable at the thought of how it happened. Curiosity, fueled by worry, pricked at him. “…How bad does it hurt?”

“I think it’s mostly just from remembering.” He paused as he put his hoodie back on. “The scratches themselves are mostly superficial, though I’m certain I have some bruises under my shell.”

“That’s never fun…” Leon looked around as Don arranged some stuff on his desk, putting tools away. “…You should tell the others what happened- with your shell.”

“I suppose I’ll have to, but maybe some time after the party… I don’t want to ruin their fun, and, after everything, they deserve it.”

“We all deserve a bit of fun after all we’ve been through,” Leon agreed.  
There was a pause as Donnie finished putting his tools away, and then stood silently, staring down as the partially built creation on his desk. Later.

“Leo,” Donnie spoke up, turning to face him. “Thanks… for this.”

That one was genuine. Leon smiled, but before he could say anything Donnie continued.

“So, are we going to join the party?”


End file.
